So, the unions take to the streets to protest at The Cuts. But whatever happened to the journalists who used to chronicle their every protest or strike (aka the lost tribe of Fleet Street)? Nicholas Jones, who used to be tribal head at the BBC, has pulled together a collection of essays that looks at the life and death of the Labour and Industrial Correspondents' Group, a kind of blue-collar alternative lobby.

Once upon a quite recent time, labour specialists were the media equal of political reporters in prestige and clout. They were a vital part of the national dialogue. But now? Virtually extinct. And three things emerge starkly from the Jones lament. One is that the group was undermined by past government decisions to brief the parliamentary lobby on industrial disputes (so cutting the labour followers out of the action).

Another is how the unions themselves have sunk below the media horizon. And the third (a self-fulfilling prophecy, you may say) is that now it's very difficult to get what you might have called fair and balanced coverage three decades ago – because one half of that coverage has mostly disappeared.